


you keep track of your lost life and I'll keep track of mine

by rustywrites



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabble, Gen, M/M, Sadstuck, post scratch, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustywrites/pseuds/rustywrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the realization that those forevers you promised yourself a lifetime ago have passed you by somehow. They never tell you that in school at story time when you’re crowded around your teacher with your folded legs; cheap carpet biting your knees. They never tell you that eventually you’re going to run out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you keep track of your lost life and I'll keep track of mine

**Author's Note:**

> Sadstucks fucking everywhere. Post-Scratch Alpha!Dave with vague memories of things pre-scratch. Overwrought prose done over the course of 40 minutes divided by two days. The list goes on. Drabble, drabble, drabble. Unbeta’d and being posted at the regrettable hour of 5:15AM.
> 
> The title is from Memphis - From the Highest Room

It’s when that pretty, perfect sadness starts to slither up from the pit of your stomach and coil at the base of your throat, right where you build your words but not your thoughts. Those are already formed and keep forming. Catastrophic back up like an avalanche that makes it almost hard to breathe. Too many things you can’t; don’t know how to say. It’s the realization that those forevers you promised yourself a lifetime ago have passed you by somehow. They never tell you that in school at story time when you’re crowded around your teacher with your folded legs; cheap carpet biting your knees. They never tell you that eventually you’re going to run out of time.

Strange and stranger still: It’s when you’re flooded with regret from all sides and you can’t find the reason. No cure for the infection with no definable cause. Your memories are the dark spaces between street lights. They strobe in and out of focus. There’s just enough light to see the road but not enough to see much more; only passing glances and the prickling sensation that you’ve left something very important behind over and over and over again. Scratched discs on infinite loop; the soundtrack of your life.

Once upon a time there was a boy. He had teeth too big for his mouth and glasses. Once upon a time he had a name and once upon a time he was your best friend. Once upon a time, you were in love with him. He never knew. But ‘once upon a time’s only happen in fairy tales and if there’s one thing you learned it’s that gods and monsters and knights and heroes may be real but fairy tales don’t exist.

Thinking about him makes your chest hurt.

Sometimes you dream. The whole world is on fire and the ground is cracking away under your feet. You’re saying something like ‘no, no, wait,’ and then you make a sound that’s probably his name because he’s on the wrong side of the fissure that comes careening through everything like lightning. Too far away. You jump every time and you never make it. You jump and reeeeaaaaach and you think he’s reaching too even though you can’t see him anymore; blinded in the wash of light. You always wake up with tears on your cheeks and your hands reaching for someone that isn’t there.

It’s when you’re struck so suddenly by a grief so intense and so abrupt is makes you drop the ceramic bowl you’ve just poured your cereal into. It shatters like an explosion that terrifies your baby brother who looks at you with wide eyed concern but you’re stock still and frozen and dimly aware that you’re crying and you know why but you don’t know how. He’s gone. Some irrational part of you is angry in that moment but you’re not sure at whom. He’s gone and you know you won’t dream anymore.

You miss the things you’ve never had.

“B-bro, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry little man, I just…” You look down at the broken pieces of bowl and bits of dry cereal at your feet and try to see reason in them where there is none. “I just lost something, that’s all.”

Half a world a way, there is a funeral for a man you never met with the wrong name who ended up in the wrong time. You loved him. He never knew. He never will.

You’ve run out of time.


End file.
